Related papers: Propulsion via flexible flapping in granular media
Enhanced colloidal transport beyond the limit imposed by diffusion is usually achieved through external fields. Here, we demonstrate the ballistic transport of a colloidal sphere using internal sources of energy provided by an attached…
Granular jamming has recently become popular in soft robotics with widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the nature of…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
Initially straight slender elastic rods with geometrically constrained ends buckle and form stable two-dimensional shapes when compressed by bringing the ends together. It is also known that beyond a critical value of the pre-stress,…
Ocean sampling for highly temporal phenomena, such as harmful algal blooms, necessitates a vehicle capable of fast aerial travel interspersed with an aquatic means of acquiring in-situ measurements. Vehicle platforms with this capability…
Viscoelastic fluids impact the locomotion of swimming microorganisms and can be harnessed to devise new types of self-propelling devices. Here we report on experiments demonstrating the use of normal stress differences for propulsion. Rigid…
The mechanical response of a wet granular layer to imposed shear is studied experimentally at low applied normal stress. The granular material is immersed in water and the shear is applied by sliding a plate resting on the upper surface of…
Bubble-propelled catalytic colloids stand out as a uniquely efficient design for artificial controllable micromachines, but so far lack a general theoretical framework that explains the physics of their propulsion. Here we develop a…
Heteropolymers are ubiquitous in both synthetic systems, such as block copolymers, and biological macromolecules, including proteins and nucleic acids. Beyond their chemical composition, these polymers often exhibit spatial variations in…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
We study the conformation and dynamics of a single polymer chain that is pulled by a constant force applied at its one end with the other end free. Such a situation is relevant to the growing technology of manipulating individual…
Dynamical behavior of steady granular flow is investigated numerically in the inelastic hard sphere limit of the soft sphere model. We find distinctively different limiting behaviors for the two flow regimes, i.e., the collisional flow and…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
Microorganisms and synthetic microswimmers often encounter complex environments consisting of networks of obstacles embedded into viscous fluids. Such settings include biological media, such as mucus with filamentous networks, as well as…
Inspired by recent experiments of cells accumulating on anisotropic substrates, we study a two-dimensional, compressible, isotropic, active fluid in the presence of anisotropic friction. We find that regions of anisotropic friction that are…
Achieving effective locomotion on diverse terrestrial substrates can require subtle changes of limb kinematics. Biologically inspired legged robots (physical models of organisms) have shown impressive mobility on hard ground but suffer…
Soft pneumatic gripping strategies are often based on pressurized actuation of structures made of soft elastomeric materials, which limits designs in terms of size, weight, achievable forces, and ease of fabrication. On the other hand,…
We introduce a simple model of self-propelled agents connected by linear springs, with no explicit alignment rules. Below a critical noise level, the agents self-organize into a collectively translating or rotating group. We derive…
The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…